Production Notes for Margaret Down Under

Welcome to Margaret Down Under, a sequel to the production of Margaret Catchpole which we toured to celebrate the Millennium four years ago. This new play is very different in tone and geography but still explores the remarkable circumstances of a woman who lived around two hundred years ago and who became a legend both in Suffolk and on the other side of the world.

Margaret Catchpole was hardly typical of her time - she was a horse-thief, a jail-breaker and a transported felon – so why is she such a heroine around here? Earlier this year I had to go on Radio 4’s Making History programme to answer that very question.  I said that she typified the local countryside in being a girl who had worked on farms and in agriculture and yet had connections with the sea, that fundamentally we recognised her as a good girl done wrong, and that we admired her steel and derring-do in stealing the horse to get to London and meet her man. We forgive her her trespasses because we see her as a girl with a beating heart the size of the stallion she stole and we recognise that it is her headstrong spirit rather than the complex web of circumstances that ultimately brings Margaret to the convict ships. And of course the sentence, like many at that time, is unjust, over-harsh and lacking in humanity.

However, this only goes a part of the way towards explaining her extraordinary life. For what should be tragedy has been turned upside down, like her situation, to become almost sainthood. Her penance is tangible and her voice, speaking as if from the dark side of the moon, is undimmed. Yet once we extend the story down under we have to recognise that the rosy patina we give her tale takes on some darker hues and turns even more sinister if we look harder at the facts. Her letters have sustained her own integrity and honesty, and the essential goodness of her character, but we have to take on board the terrible surroundings of her fate. The convict ships and the penal settlement in Australia reduced women to the status of the lowest possible. And although, once again, Margaret’s own great moral indignation and sense of justice combines to keep her head up as others fall, we have to ask what kind of pressures she faced. Recent scholarship (The Fatal Shore, The Floating Brothel) has revealed the terrible depravity, corruption and brutality that ran through every step of the convicts’ journey and the infamous behaviour on ship and shore in relation to the transportation of females.

Once again we will be asked if this is the truth of what happened to Margaret Catchpole? Well, no, not specifically, but it is the truth of what happened to many women convicts. Margaret’s famous letters home, while fascinating in their detail of life in the new continent, are very reticent on her early arrival and the situation in Botany Bay itself. Later on she gives us more details of her life as she progresses into a respected member of the community but in the early part she merely repeats her mantra “there is a deal of wickedness here” and passes on to the cost of tea and sugar, thus protecting her patrons, the Cobbolds, from the awful truth.

The most persistent legend in Australia is that she became a midwife and indeed in the Hawkesbury District Hospital the Maternity Ward is named after her - not a bad ending for a horse thief.

So we can only research and imagine. This is what we have done and come up with what I believe is the truth for many of the women convicts. We have tried to make her typical and yet invest her with that special quality that is Margaret Catchpole. And we have ended up with a Margaret that we can continue to cherish and admire, who kept hope in her heart and charity in her head, and who in her adversity still says something to us today.

Ivan Cutting

Artistic Director

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

I was very pleased when Ivan suggested I write a sequel to Margaret Catchpole. Now I could follow our heroine through the year-long voyage to a convict’s life in Australia. I began to read about criminals, courts and conditions in England, about the extraordinary life of the sailing-ship, and about the awfulness of the convict settlement of Botany Bay.

That awfulness initially dominated my thoughts: my first draft was more a bleak history lesson than a play. But gradually I progressed towards what we have now – a story of strong characters in an extraordinary situation. I can say that there is a firm basis in history for all my characters and situations. I might also hope that my play may encourage other folk to read Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore and Sian Rees’ The Floating Brothel.

 And it’s a joy to be working with Ivan again. There is a very strong mutual trust between us, a confidence that lets me get on with my own bit of the job knowing that Ivan will apply his special genius – “izzy-wizzy dust”, as he calls it – to create a powerfully theatrical production.

Alastair Cording

August 2004